Page 2 of Hazard

“Havoc, we’ve lost the HVT. Repeat. HVT is gone, taken by unknown female tangos.”

He hated losing in anything, and he especially hated being outwitted by some woman posing as a model, but what hit him hardest was that he could have lost Skull, and complete mission failure would have absolutely paled by comparison.

He was going to track those bitches down, and there would be complete retribution coming their way.

“Return to base,” was the response. “There’s been a development.”

He returned to Skull and helped him up. He must have had his clock thoroughly cleaned to still be sitting down. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it against the back of Skull’s head. Skull moaned, sending his hand through his disheveled, temple-cut black hair, brushing it off his forehead impatiently, groaning again.

Hazard lifted his hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“You want to play the finger game? How many am I holding up?” Skull flashed him his middle finger.

“Fair enough,” Hazard scoffed as he hauled him to his feet. “Can you walk?”

Skull sent him one of his dark warlock looks from a set of deadly black eyes.

“Your Master-of-Darkness look isn’t going to deter me.”

Skull regained his footing easily, pushing Hazard’s hands away, but he couldn’t ignore his shirt collar stained with blood. It had to hurt.

He started for the end of the alley but didn’t make it, his legs folding a little, and he put his hand on the wall. “Christ, what did she hit me with?”

“The woman who hit you looked like she dabbled in whips and chains,” Hazard said. “No surprise it was a blackjack.”

Hazard immediately wrapped his arm around Skull’s waist and urged him along. “I should have brought Bones with me. They would be the ones nursing wounds right about now.”

“Yeah, Bones would have torn them apart,” Hazard said of their K-9 fur missile. Anyone who touched Skull would be on the dog’s shitlist, and Bones remembered everyone on that list.

Skull was ready to chew glass and like it. Anything was better than this humiliating feeling. He’d been duped by a petite “little piece of fluff” as he’d called her, but she was anything but. He’d caught up to her meeting with Enzo and his bodyguards in the alley—had this been their meeting place? There was a hotel right across the street. He should know, he did the recon.

Skull had grabbed her arm, and she had looked so frightened and vulnerable, he’d stupidly dropped his guard. That’s when she’d struck, and the leather-clad woman had attacked Enzo’s bodyguards out of nowhere. She had two of them down before he could react, and he had honed reflexes. But his fluff was keeping him too busy to intervene. He swung at her, but she ducked, then moved so fast, he was caught off guard, brute force completely ineffective. She struck him under the armpit, sending him curling over and dropping his guard, then her fists flew into the soft skin beneath his ear, his solar plexus, and finally to his groin, which he managed to partially block, but he was completely exposed and off balance. She grabbed the back of his head and drove her knee into his face, momentarily stunning him and driving him to the ground.

When he’d tried to rise, he’d been struck on the back of the head, making him see even more stars and stunning him again.

That’s all he could remember until Hazard had asked him if he was okay. He had a bitter taste in his mouth at the loss of Enzo. Now he and Hazard had to face the music back at base, a government building that was being refurbished, housing their Tactical Operations Center or TOC, their sleeping quarters, including Bones’s crate and their briefing and interrogation rooms. All those spots she’d hit were throbbing, especially his armpit and under his ear. His head was pounding.

When Hazard dumped him into the passenger seat, he gasped, an inhalation of infinite, pained complexity. How could such a tiny woman cause so much agony with her fists? Rage filled him for a moment, something his cool, calm exterior never saw, and he wouldn’t give himself away now. He’d trained in hand-to-hand combat for years, but her attack was…strangely graceful and subtle, balanced, agile, using her speed to counter her stronger opponent. Clever little fluff.

The next time he saw her, he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot to kill.

When they entered the building through a conveniently covered and gated portico, Hazard parked and came around to help him. This time he allowed his teammate to assist him. It was clear the way he kept glancing over at Skull that he was concerned. Luckily, she missed his junk, or he would have been walking funny.

As it was, he was sure to have bruises where her fists had landed.

Skull pushed away when they got to the briefing room, preferring to walk on his own. They entered and the soft murmur stopped. Anna Graham, their CIA handler, was at the front of the room. Her gaze washed over them, and she sighed. Hazard took a seat and Skull followed suit.

“Um…” Anna cleared her throat. “There’s been a mistake made and it affected your mission. You see…”

Her voice drifted off as his brain went fuzzy, and he clenched his eyes closed, dropping his head. When he opened them, the sight of a pair of navy-blue peep-toe heels clacked against the tiles of the floor as those feet slipped by his vision.

His head came up sharply, the pain exploding in agony at the abrupt movement, and he roared, “What the hell is going on here?”

Anna looked at him sheepishly, and the guys all stared. It was clear he’d missed something.

The blonde from the alley way stood next to Anna, along with her leather-clad counterpart, but he could barely spare her a glance. His ire was focused on Isabella or whatever her real name was.

The woman who had bested him in the alley, the one whose presence told him more about her than he’d gleaned from her performance, and everything it told him set every nerve ending he had on full redline alert. His gaze narrowed, zeroing in on the woman and cataloging every square inch of her lush female form, every brass button parading down the front of her short, cropped jacket, every perfectly tailored fold and sweep of the navy-blue dress so lovingly molded to her body, every inch of blindingly white piping accenting the suit, right up to the hard blue eyes and the elegantly broad-brimmed white Panama hat.

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